Book Making: Authors who reduce ego can increase income

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Authors who reduce ego can increase income

While you may be flattered by a high "cover price" on your book, you may make more money in total if the book has a lower price.

Here are comparisons (rounded off) of an author's monthly income for one independently self-pubbed book:

January 2011, for a $15.95 paperback: $64
January 2012, for the $4.99 ebook, discounted to $4.12: $220
January 2013, for the ebook reduced to $2.99 and discounted to $2.51: $345

Not only did total income increase as the price has been reduced, but sales have increased as the book has gotten older -- which is not the typical pattern for book sales.

For a Lamborghini, high price is a marketing device. For a book, low price is a marketing device.

The low price enables and encourages more people to buy the book, and they apparently recommend the book to others. Maybe a reader will recommend it to a movie producer.

While no author in 21st-century-America can live on $345 per month, if you have 10, 20 or 30 books generating that income, you can think about quitting your day job.

---

dollar sign from http://bma-wealth.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-does-dollar-sign-represent.html

Lamborghini Aventador photo from www.lamborghini.com/en/home/

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

My Books at Amazon.com

My Books at Barnes & Noble

(Links above may lead to some books written by others. I can't control it.)

My publishing company

My personal Facebook page

My author Facebook page

My publishing Facebook page

My personal website

Phone equipment

Email me

I've been writing professionally for more than 40 years. My first book was published by Doubleday in 1976. Since 2008, I've owned a small publishing company, Silver Sands Books. Some recent and future books are shown above and below. Info is at the Silver Sands site. Printed and ebooks are available from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and other online and terrestrial booksellers. PDF ebooks are available at Lulu.com and elsewhere. Some cover designs shown may not be the final versions.

..

MICHAEL'S BLOGS (some are no longer being updated)

Worldwide Penis News covers serious and humorous penile developments.

It's Too Easy To Get Pregnant reports on some of the tragedies caused by people who should not be parents.

BookMakingBlog is where Michael discusses writing, editing, design, publishing, language, culture,
politics and sometimes other things.

My Final Quarter-Century Above Ground is an appropriately irreverent blog about dying and death.

I never did it, was never arrested for it, never tried for it, and never convicted of it tells the story of Michael's horrible and damaging harassment, and his response.

911 Wackos provides a look at weird 911 calls and callers.

Letters to April Wong is a collection of ridiculous and scam emails sent to a person who does not exist.

For The First Time (or the last time) talks about changes in society and technology: first toilet paper, last convertible, first voice mail, last Automat, first female leader of Boy Scout troop, etc.

Oh, how stupid! provides an an occasional look at some of the stupidest things done by human beings.

Gotta Get One recommends and criticizes electronics, food, cars, cameras, tools, movies and more.

About my typing errors

I frequently criticize errors in books, and some readers have complained about my own lack of perfection. Even though I often go over my blog posts 10, 20, 30 or more times, they are not immune to errors. There is no excuse, but there are several reasons. (1) I'm getting old. (2) The spell checker in Blogger is terrible. (3) I have neither the time nor the budget to hire an editor for a daily blog, which I normally start writing at about 3:30 a.m. (4) Books and commercial websites (especially publishers' and authors' websites) should be held to a higher standard than daily blogs. (5) I'm getting old. Oh. Did I say that before?